On shuttering Water Cooler Games
I’ve just closed Water Cooler Games, the blog about “videogames with an agenda” that Gonzalo Frasca and I started in 2003. I have also archived the site in its entirety here on Bogost.com, and all existing links to pages on watercoolergames.org will forward correctly in perpetuity. When Gonzalo and I first started Water Cooler Games, the very idea of “videogames… read more
Videogames with an Agenda - website archive
From 2003-2009, Water Cooler Games served as the web’s primary forum for “videogames with an agenda” — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment. The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca from 2003-2006, and by me alone from 2006-2009.… read more
The Onion Kebabs Apple
Satirical news source The Onion is funny every day (something that can’t even be said for The Daily Show or The Colbert Report), but sometimes they manage to elevate deadpan to the sublime. Today’s piece on the fictional announcement of the Apple Wheel is such a one. Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Everything about this piece is… read more
How games can be informal and personal. From my "Persuasive Games" column at Gamasutra
In the late 19th century, photographs were primarily made on huge plate-film cameras with bellows and expensive hand-ground lenses. Their operation was nontrivial, and required professional expertise. The relative youth of photography as a medium made that expertise much more scarce than it is today. All that changed when Kodak introduced the Brownie Camera in 1900. The Brownie was different.… read more
A Review of the iPhone
Despite attempts to maintain my geek cred, despite my propensity for gadgeteering, despite my favor for the cult of Apple, despite my lust for shiny things with microprocessors, I didn’t get an iPhone when it first came out earlier this year. Indeed, I also didn’t get one when the new versions were released this month. It’s not that I wasn’t… read more
Things people do with videogames
Think of all the things you can do with a photograph. You can document the atrocities of war, as photojournalists sometimes do. You can record fleeting moments in time, as did documentarians like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank. You can capture the ordinary moments of family life, as many people do at birthday parties or holidays for an album or… read more
Why Facebook Ads are Stupid
From a business perspective, it was my impression that one of the great promises of Facebook and other social networking sites is that they can offer extremely selective ad targeting. Facebook users willingly provide large amounts of enormously specific information about themselves, from their age and location to their artistic interests and sexual preferences. Why, then, are Facebook ads targeted… read more
Opinion piece published in The Guardian
There are a few common reasons why advertisers want to use videogames to reach consumers. One is the belief that videogames are a place to recover the waning audiences of television advertising. The highly desirable, seemingly elusive 18-34 male demographic is often, unfairly, assumed to correspond directly to videogame players. What better way to retrieve these “lost” consumers than to… read more
Links to my week of posts as guest editor
Last week I served as guest editor at popular games and game culture blog Kotaku All in all, I wrote 45 articles at Kotaku, which I’ve now linked below. I haven’t even tried to read all the comments on those threads though. I had a great time doing it and I’m really grateful that Brian Crecente extended the invitation.
Small, cute, insidious
Note: Chumby representative Andrew “Bunnie” Huang has replied to this thread, and I have in turn replied to his response with more questions. I encourage you to read through all the comments for more detail. Finally, I should point out that I am not an attorney and nothing herein should be considered legal advice. Chumby is a WiFi-connected microcomputer that… read more